


Absent All Else

by LadySilver



Series: Upended [11]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Single Parents, au bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melissa McCall and Sheriff Stilinski play the cards they're dealt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absent All Else

"Do you remember what it was like after Stiles was born?" Melissa asked. She glanced at the playing cards in her hand, shuffled the order of a couple of them to make it easier to see what she held. The wooden chair on which she sat was hard and an ache had started in her lower back from the lack of cushion, but she felt herself in no position to complain, all things considered. Instead, she hoped to distract herself from thinking about it with conversation.

Sheriff Stilinski looked up from his own cards, a tired, reminiscent smile playing around his lips. "You mean the part about not getting a full night's sleep for two years?" He sat in a much more comfortable chair. He'd offered it to her, but she'd declined, not for the least reason that she didn't want to be a coddled woman. She'd never been good at playing that part.

"Two years?" she asked, surprised. Scott had slept through the night at barely a month old. By two months she already had to argue with him about waking up. Funny how early habits revealed themselves.

"We couldn't keep him full. The kid was always hungry. Sarah started adding cereal to his bottles long before the doctors cleared him for food. We're lucky he didn't turn out to be allergic to anything."

Melissa gave her head a slight shake and drew a new card from the stack. It didn't help her hand, so she flipped it onto the discard pile right away. "Actually, I was thinking about how they completely rewrote everything: the things you noticed, the things you thought about, the things you valued as important. I remember how before Scott was born, we were so worried about what time TV shows were on and whose turn it was to take care of the laundry. And after, we talked about poop and spit-up the way our colleagues traded gossip on who was having an affair with whom."

"How many diapers did the baby use; what color was the poop; how often had he pooped?" The Sheriff chuckled. "Yeah, I remember those conversations. I remember being so relieved that I could go to work every day just to think about something that wasn't expelled from my child." He drew a card, started to discard it, then sucked in a breath. "Well, I'll be," he spoke, under his breath. Adding the card to his hand, he shuffled others around, threw a King of Diamonds on the discard, and knocked on the surface of the long, wooden table that doubled as the registration desk at the Old Jailhouse Museum. It was pitted and scarred with age and use, looking a lot like Melissa felt most days. An outdated computer hunkered on the far end. Sheriff had pushed it and a stack of promotional paperwork out of the way so that they would have room to play while they waited.

Melissa pulled another card and, again, promptly tossed it away. All she could do at this point was reduce how much her hand cost her, and drawing Jacks was not going to help. She sighed and watched as Sheriff set his hand down. He had a straight run of high Diamonds ending on the Jack. He must have been waiting for the Queen until he pulled whatever card it was that rounded out his hand. Her hand was all fives, save for an errant eight that she hadn't been able to get rid of. "You win again," she said, pushing the eight out from the rest of her cards so he could see it and calculate the right number of points against her. Not that she thought he'd cheat, but it was better to be cautious. "I think I'm going to check on them." She started to stand up, one hand going to her lower back. Her knees popped. "I swear I'm not old enough to feel like this," she added, not expecting an answer.

"You're not," Stilinski replied with a leading smile. He stacked the cards together and picked them up to shuffle. The deck looked so small in his large hands. "You've just been sitting too long." He thunked the cards back onto the table. "We've both been sitting too long." He stood up too, his blue eyes crinkling with a suppressed wince. He shook his head.

Melissa glanced at the clock mounted above the registration area, the cheap plastic device proclaiming that the two adults hadn't been sitting that long at all. As a youth, she had easily been able to stay up all night long and go on with the next day with little or no penalty. As a woman who saw forty coming on far too quickly, she noted the time at just after nine pm and felt a yawn pull itself up from deep inside her. She slapped a hand over her mouth before Sheriff could get a good look at all her fillings and thought wryly about what a strange first date this was. Her eyes widened as the thought flitted through her head again. First date? Where had that come from?

Stilinski had already moved toward the arched doorway that led from the main room toward the part of the building where the cells were housed. He hesitated at the threshold, either waiting for her or simply unable to take the step over it.

The wall next to the archway held a long glass display case in which sat the rusted remains of manacles and chains, the faded pictures of famous inmates and less-famous punishment devices, and yellowed pages from newspapers and diaries extolling the heinous crimes that had been retributed in these walls. The two parents had spent a long time standing in front of that display case, doubting what they had agreed to do. Their hands had been clasped together in mutual support. Few parents wanted to see their sons in prison. Never had Melissa or Stilinski imagined that they would have insisted on it.

A scream tore down the hallway, accompanied with the clanking of chains. Another scream, higher pitched but no less anguished, joined in. Melissa swallowed a groan of protest at what she was hearing. Her eyes found Stilinski's; his were already on her. In their depths she saw relief that he hadn't had to be here alone. She couldn't agree more. She'd tried—and she knew she would have figured out a way if it had been necessary—but she couldn't imagine how she would have been strong enough to help Scott through this by herself. Worse, how she would have been strong enough to help Scott if his father had still been in the picture.

Stilinski nervously hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans. The stance and shell-shocked expression on his face took Melissa back to the first day of Kindergarten. She had seen him then, standing under the marching row of anthropomorphic alphabet letters that decorated one wall, with the same stance, same expression. She didn't know then which child was his amongst the two dozen similarly sized children tearing around the room, though she would learn quickly enough. She had taken pity on the man, the only father in a room of half-panicked mothers and over-excited children, and walked over to introduce herself. This gesture saved both of them from heart-attacks when five-year-old Scott, who had nearly given himself an asthma attack over the notion of being away from his mother for a whole day, had blithely accompanied Stiles home from school. Because of that introduction, Stilinski knew whom to call, and they both shared a good laugh over their sons' instant bonding.

"If you would have asked me a month ago, I would have said I had this parenting thing figured out," Stilinski said in an obvious effort to infuse some humor into the situation. Gallows humor, Melissa realized. What an appropriate phrase for where they were.

The absurdity of the situation struck Melissa and she huffed out a laugh that sounded too much like a sob. She tugged at the ponytail she'd dragged her unruly hair back into earlier, tightening it or loosening, she wasn't sure which. It was something to do with her hands while she turned away and composed herself. When she had control of her voice, she replied, "Spoken like someone asking for trouble," trying to keep her tone light, and mostly failing. At least, she wasn't fooled. Stilinski was too polite to give away what he thought. The screams from the prison cells started again, became more sustained, broken only by the desperate gasps of air that sustained them. Softer, she continued, "Every time I thought I knew what I was doing with Scott, the rules would change." She raised an eyebrow at that, as if first steps, first words, and first werewolf transformations were somehow on the same linear progression of normal child development. Later, she would probably think back on what she'd said, what she'd thought, and cringe; but right now, everything was so ridiculous that nothing was.

Stilinski offered a shrug, a slight raising of his shoulders as if not sure how to commiserate without turning the conversation into a one-upmanship. "At least that's consistent," he commented darkly. She wondered specifically what he was thinking of. For all the struggles she'd had with Scott, she recognized that she had gotten a pretty easy-going kid. Stilinski no doubt had a bookful of stories about his own parenting challenges, ones she would be sure to ask about in the upcoming months. It would give them plenty to talk about.

"You ready?" Stilinski asked. He held out his hand for her to take again, and she did. She didn't want to walk down this hallway alone. Its stone walls were dark and stained with time and the smoke of countless cigarettes. The few bulbs hanging from the ceiling were inadequate to light the place once the sun had gone down, after visiting hours were over. A red EXIT sign hummed at an emergency door at the other end of the hall, a much later addition to bring the old building up to code for a tourist attraction. No, she wasn't ready. But, since when did readiness matter for any of the challenges that came with being a parent?

They started down the corridor together, its breadth barely wide enough to allow the two of them to walk side-by-side. The clanging had increased, the rattling and shaking of caged animals desperate for freedom. Melissa squeezed Stilinski's hand, was relieved to note that his was damp. Those caged animals were their sons, two friends who had gone searching for innocent adventure in the forest preserve one night and had gotten bitten by a something that would turn out to be a werewolf.

Thank goodness for the old jailhouse with its barbaric chains, it underground cells, its iron doors—and its historical significance that provided enough funding to keep it maintained and not so much to advertise its presence. And the best part: As town Sheriff, Stilinski had the keys, a remnant of old tradition and law. The first moment after Scott told her what was going on when Melissa thought she could be the parent she needed to be was when Stilinski suggested imprisoning their sons for the night. She had wanted to punch him, then she wanted to hug him.

She drew a deep breath. Let it out. "Let's get this first over with," she said, barely able to hear herself. The air was thick with tension, and loud with the continued yelling and the crackling of bodies contorting and breaking.

"Did you bring a camera?" he murmured.

That, Melissa heard. Stilinski's weather-worn face darkened; he hadn't meant for his question to fall into one of the rare pauses for breath, hadn't meant to be heard at all. She wouldn't be the only one kicking herself tomorrow. Now she did punch him, slugging him lightly in the arm to show that she heard the statement for what it was. She appreciated the levity, and she understood immediately from where Stiles had inherited his sense of humor. "I don't think we need this one for the baby book," she responded.

Melissa and Stilinski reached the end of the corridor and the turn-off for the steps that would lead down to the cells, and both came to a stop. The light bulb above them flickered and the air smelled of dust, mildew, and hundreds of years of desperation and last chances.

"They're still our sons," Stilinski stated. She imagined that his thoughts were running down the same track as hers. What parent didn't wonder about who their child would become? That they were actually concerned about _what_ their children would become seemed irrelevant in the moment.

"They'll always be our sons," Melissa replied, giving voice to that thought. She had a feeling that this exchange was going to become a mantra, a necessary reminder for the two single parents who struggled to do the best they could in a realm of parenting that no _What to Expect_ book had ever covered. The simple statements of reality were the most powerful. She and Stilinski would be here every month, enacting the same routine, because it had never occurred to either of them not to be. People had met and bonded over far lesser commonalities of values and interest.

And, yes, she knew it was totally wrong of her to be thinking about that now, as her foot hovered over the first of the stone steps, their sons now howling together in an abandoned cell below them. If she had had to guess the one kid in that Kindergarten class that frustratingly sensitive Scott would form an indelible bond with, the hyperactive, inattentive, and frustratingly brilliant dynamo named Stiles wouldn't have made her top ten. There was nothing the two boys appeared to have in common. But, since when did friendship—or love—ever make any sense?

The sounds coming from the cells quieted at the first thunk of Stilinski's boot heel on the stairs. The boys knew their parents were coming and had switched from furious protests at their confinement to hushed anticipation. Melissa could hear their snuffles and the scrape of their feet against the rock floors. She idly wondered who would be waiting in those cells. Would werewolf-Scott still be quiet and emotionally intense? Would werewolf-Stiles still be garrulous and impulsive? As quick as the questions were born of her curiosity, she quelled them.

As she and Stilinski traversed down into the darkened stairwell together, she wasn't looking for metaphors to help her make sense of the turn her life had taken. That didn't stop her seeing them all around. The most important one was a simple reminder of what she had always done when reality had interfered with her well-meaning plans: It was to play the hand she had been dealt.

No matter how Scott grew and changed, she would never be able to see him without seeing the squalling, red-faced infant who had been placed on her chest sixteen years before, whose mere presence had redefined her life in every way possible. Likewise, a part of her would always see Stiles has the impetuous child racing through the Kindergarten classroom with his shoes untied, a pair of safety scissors clutched in one hand, and Stilinski as the overwhelmed father standing under a grinning M, trying so hard to convince himself that it was safe to leave his son and go home. She didn't know how they saw her. It didn't matter. The four of them were in this together, and they would get through this together, one full moon at a time.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Fulfills my AU Bingo square #5: Prison.


End file.
